Squibgineering
by credentiality
Summary: Investigating the underpinnings of the "Harry Potter: Methods of Rationality" universe.
1. Blue Tigers

[This is a collection of very short stories set in the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality universe.]

2 September 2012

Amy Anne Bamford hugged the Tome of Elementary Rationality to her chest like a shield. It was a poor shield, even for her slight 11-year-old frame, although it was cruelly large for a first-year textbook. But the pressure on her butterfly-filled stomach was comforting, even if the weight did make her arms ache.

She continued tentatively down the stairs, feeling a chill as strange figures passed her, brushing against her as she went. She would have said the feeling was like being passed by ghosts, except that she had actually been passed by a ghost on her way to breakfast, and had to admit that its icy chill had been entirely unlike the merely human anxiety that tugged at her sternum as the other students passed her.

Emily squeezed the book harder, and felt the unfamiliar texture of the newly-blue cuff of her newly-bought robes against her wrist, and the embossed leather of the tome on her fingers. The logician, from all accounts, sounded horrid. She turned a corner and saw the gate before her. Well, technically it was a door.

But, to be fair, it was a massive door, with an arched top, and made of ancient and implacable, brooding timber, thick as a fencepost, with a wrought-iron ring for a handle. A placard above the door, written in an ancient and foreign script Amy did not recognize, presumably began "Abandon all hope..." Amy ducked her head and entered.

She found a desk, every bit as hard and uncomfortable as the desk she had occupied at Bransum Primary School last year, but made from the same wood as the portal gate, er, door, rather than shiny metal and hard plastic. About two thirds of the way to the back of the classroom, just far enough forward to avoid suspicion of being a miscreant, but far enough back to minimize attention. How could she have ever imagined that after the lazy summer months she would find herself in Magical Britain, a place she hadn't even dreamed could exist, and that it would be so full of strange and inscrutable powers?

After enough of an interval for her to become slightly bored, but just at the peak where the boredom adds to the anxiety and does not yet diminish it, the logician's entourage arrived.

First was the sense of dread, triggered as the heavy adult footsteps first registered in Amy's subconscious. Then the progressive hush of students falling silent as the chattier ones noticed, and finally the logician's robes passed into Amy's field of view.

As the professor turned, curly locks framed a lightly wrinkled face that conveyed age, and worry and care, and more than a note of bitterness. "I am Perspicacia Foundry, the potionmistress at Hogwarts. I have been," the slightest of pause_s__, "__selected_ to teach rationality to first year students. _Luminus__abscondance_." She tapped her wand perfunctorily right, left, right. Two students, one slightly in front and to the left of Amy, and one directly in front, began to glow red. Names appeared in ornate text above their heads: Filbert Frink, and Eugenia Paltry.

"You two are not enrolled in this session. Out." Their cheeks grew red in embarassment, further intensifying the effect, and they hastily gathered their books and departed, looking at the floor. Filbert sniffed and began running, hoping to gain the exit before the tears began to fall, and only succeeding in calling more attention to himself.

"There will be no running in rationality class. Two points from," a pause, a tiny, complicated twitch of the wand, and the glows changed from red to yellow and scarlet. "Hufflepuff." Another twitch, and "-2 points" appeared in the yellow title above "Filbert Frank." Amy sank low in her seat, blushing in sympathetic shame.

"In this class we will study rationality, as mandated in the year Two Thousand Two by the Ministry of Bayes. Since they did not see fit to endow Hogwarts with a professorship to fill that role, the duty has fallen to me." Her voice was clipped, precise, as she paced in measured strides across the front of the classroom, surveying the diminutive first-year wizards.

"Per the mandate, we shall study..." another wordless movement of the wand, and text appeared in the air before Professor Foundry, too small for Amy to read. The professor continued, "...mathemagics, classical machinations, sadistics, ethical behavior and rationality. Error will not be tolerated, and fallacy will be severely punished."

"We will begin with mathemagics. Who can tell us why we study mathemagics? Yes, Miss Weasely."

A fair-skinned, freckled and bespectacled girl lowered her hand and spoke. "The leaders of Chaos Legion used it in the Battle of Hogwarts. It's one of the sacred muggle technomancies. Father says it's so powerful that only a few of the muggle nobility can use it."

"Correct. And yet we will learn it in this classroom. _Alonzo__Entscheidungs_." A twitch of the Professor's wand, and pale blue flash above each desk startled Amy. She jumped and emitted a small "eep!" as a rather harmless looking, worn wooden box dropped onto the desk where her right elbow had been supporting her chin. It had symbols carved in it on all sides and at all angles, and a rectangular protrusion of red glass with glowing, ornamented text reading, enigmatically, "nil".

"This is Lamda's Calculator, brought to us by Lord Potter in the year two thousand four. It allows even first-year students to harness wild mathemagic energy and complete the ancient riddles that block access to the higher ranks, although it is unlikely that any of you will ever reach them. Outside of class, until you learn the _Alonzo_ charm, you may tap the symbol on the inside cover of your textbooks with your wands to summon the Calculator to complete your assignments."

"Now children, draw your wands and do precisely as I do. Failure will result in the automatic deduction of house points."

Professor Foundry made a sweeping gesture with both hands, starting palms down above her Calculator and ending vertically toward the center of the front wall of the classroom, and a large, ethereal replica of her Lamda Calculator appeared in the air behind and above her.

Precise and deliberate, she tapped a number 8 near the glass display on her desk, as a giant ethereal wand did the same on the giant replica. Amy took her wand (9½" Palm with a silver core) and tapped the number on her Calculator. It annoyed her that her hand trembled, and she told herself that there shouldn't be anything frightening about tapping a button on a wooden calculator with a wooden stick. Then it annoyed her to realize that this was the first time she had actually been allowed to use her wand, and she certainly hoped magic wands were useful for more than pushing buttons. As she tapped it, the red "nil" on the glass disappeared, and was replaced by the word "oct" in green, quickly growing fatter and fading away quickly, to be replaced again by "nil", also green.

Even more annoyingly, and yet unsurprisingly, two of the students in the classroom had apparently failed in their first task as wizards, and "-1" now hung in green and red over their heads, respectively, below a larger "!". Professor Foundry peered peevishly at them until they tapped the appropriate symbol, and the "!" disappeared. Foundry looked to the ceiling briefly, exhaled slightly, then recomposed herself.

"Can anyone tell us what that symbol does?" Several hands went up, including Amy's, even as the thought occurred: Wait, do wizards really not know what an 8 is?

"Yes, Mr. ..."

"Potts, ma'm. It looks like an 8, but as it's the one at the top, not the one by the 7, it really means a sideways 8, which means infinity. It's about the ancient power of mathemagic to create wealth from nothing."

Amy's train of thought wobbled slightly at the unexpected bump in the tracks. Wealth from nothing? She liked math, but had never seen it create wealth. Well, now that she thought about it metaphorically, it...

"Thank you Mister Potts. That is correct. And as this is rationality class, we will prove the correctness of the answer with an example. Follow me, children, and we shall find the mathemagical sum of 4 and 4."

Professor Foundry tapped the "4" button, and a green "4" replaced "nil" on the display. She then whisked her wand right to left over the Calculator, and the "4" moved about a centimeter behind the glass, becoming slightly out of focus. She paused while the students imitated, and one of the students with a "-1" ended up with a "-2" above his head.

When the slowpokes caught up, she repeated the two gestures, and the original 4 faded back another centimeter, to be replaced by the second one.

Finally she tapped an ornate "+" symbol, and the "+" appeared on the display, only to merge with the two 4's as they moved forward, and the whole mass grew and split sideways until it formed the number "10".

"Thus we see, children, the first and most elementary mystery of mathemagics. Four plus four, when aided by magic, need not be constrained to eight, but has grown before our eyes by a full twenty-five percent."

Professor Foundry turned and faced the class, folded her right arm toward her so that the hilt of her wand rested on her shoulder, and thrust her hand forward as if she were throwing a dart at a dartboard. A fountain of parchment airplanes materialized from the tip and sailed around the classroom, unfolding themselves one per desk without a crease.

"This is your homework. You will complete the following exercises before the next class period or you will lose house points. We will do the first ten problems together."...

Later, in the Ravenclaw common room, Amy once again smoothed the parchment with her hands, although it had remained as perfectly flat as when it had unfolded itself upon her desk. The futility of even smoothing her worksheet made it harder to contain the frustration that built in her throat and, given much more provocation, would start her eyes watering. She stood up and paced away from the table, trying to think of a pretense for where she was going, in case anyone was watching. Someone was.

Valerie Anderton, a fifth year witch, was reading a paperback novel, comfortably wedged into the corner of an enormous red velvet couch, surrounded by pillows. Amy had noticed the garish cover art that made it obviously a sci-fi novel, and had been dying to ask about it, but had been too overwhelmed by the first day of classes and their difference in age to say anything.

Valerie was looking over her wire-rimmed glasses at Amy, like an actor trying to look wise while playing a professor. "You seem to be having difficulty," she said mildly, glancing at the Lamda Calculator on the ancient table.

"Nope, just..." and here Amy's brain once again betrayed her, staying obstinately silent as she groped for an excuse. The silence lengthened beyond "looking for the right word", sailed right past "polite fiction", and mercilessly, unambiguously landed on "so frustrated I'm about to cry but I don't want to admit it _because__it__'__s__not__even__worth__crying__about__!_" Amy managed to swallow, barely.

Valerie broke the silence, mercifully. "You grew up with muggles, I take it?"

Oh no, this was going to be far worse. Amy managed the slightest of nods.

Valerie saw Amy's apprehension at the question and continued quickly, "Then you should be aware that we can only be friends if you find Arithmancy completely and utterly absurd."

This startled Amy enough that she exhaled in a half laugh, half sob. All she could manage was "What?"

"Seriously, seven plus two equals eleven?" Valerie smiled.

Amy's brain, so recently silent, now helpfully arranged at least six sentences for her to say simultaneously, ranging from "I thought I was crazy!" to "I know!" and "What am I even doing at Hogwarts?" Realizing the futility, she merely nodded more vigorously.

Valerie said nothing, giving Amy a chance to collect her wits. She collapsed at the other end of the couch from Valerie's den and put her head in her hands. Finally she said, her voice minutely wavering, "It's just so _wrong_, you know? I mean, I can handle the magic food and flying books and even the ghosts. But math shouldn't be like that! I mean, I even read a story where things don't add up the way they should, and it was written by a mathematician, and the whole point was how bizarre and foreign that is. Maybe magic can make oranges out of thin air, but four plus four is still eight! Maybe you end up with four plus four plus two and you get ten, because somebody conjured up the two extra ones. But it's still four plus four plus two!"

"Did they give you the spiel about how the magic gives you extra?", Valerie asked.

"Yes! And it's just so... wrong! It feels like lying. To the universe or something!" Amy paused, then checked herself. "But I guess I'm just being..."

"Nope! Don't even start with that. Math is math, and magic doesn't change that. Let me see your textbook."

Amy pried herself out of the well of soft cushion and pulled the heavy tome from the table, a little more harshly than she would have done for an _honest_ textbook. She timidly thrust it onto the cushion next to Valerie, still nervous about approaching the older student too closely, and retreated to the exact spot where she had been at the end of the couch.

Valerie produced her wand and leviosa'd the book open before her, flipping through the pages as if inspecting a tardy schoolchild's uniform. "Wow, this is several inches thicker than the edition I had. They just keep adding drivel to it." She waved her wand dramatically and pretentiously read aloud, "Lambda calculations are a fun and exciting privilege of the magical world! Transcending mere technology, the supernumeracy of mathemagics," and here on the parchment was an _entirely_gratuitous bulleted list. Valerie continued reading:

* Allows the economy of Magical Britain to grow every year!

* Explains how we can conjure water and light from nothingness!

* And brings us ever closer to understanding the deep mysteries of the Income Tax!

Amy couldn't see it from where she sat, but the attractive young wizards playing an improbably exuberant game of Wizard Chess in the stock photo on the textbook page, upon hearing Valerie's dramatic reading, stood up and applauded enthusiastically.

Valerie glanced down disapprovingly at them and twitched her wand. The book snapped shut and sailed across the room, and just before crashing into the wall, righted itself and slinked penitently back to the table where Amy's homework lay.

"Well, that's enough of that. Come on, let's go to the library and find the first edition of the Tome of Elementary Rationality. The one with assignments in Python." Valerie paused, "Er, that's not what you think. Or maybe it is."

Amy cocked her head, mouth open, but said nothing.

Valerie continued, lunging forward to escape the cushions. "Plus, I have some bad news." Valerie's novel disappeared into her mokeskin and she strode toward the door. Amy followed, still off balance.

"Four plus four really does equal ten. But not the way they told you."


	2. Myrddin

3 October 561 (A.D.)

Myrddin Wyllt flung himself upright, trying desperately to remember where he was and why he was being attacked. He crouched to strike as his opponent rolled away, with animal fear still screaming inside for him to flee instead, and realized that his opponent was already dead.

Or at least had chosen a highly inadvisable prone, motionless fighting stance. Myrddin paused, tremblingly tense, as heightened senses flooded him with details.

First, flight would have been a better response than fight. His opponent was far larger, better dressed, better armed, and, though Myrddin would never have admitted this to anyone else, much handsomer than he, in a generically rugged, jutting-chin sort of way. And second, he was nobility. Not a fashion he had ever seen, but far too well-dressed for a commoner. This scared him almost as much as the initial shock.

Third, he couldn't remember actually having struck his opponent. Fourth, his left foot was colder than his right, the left being without a sock. Fifth, it was nighttime, and he was in the hollow beneath a low hanging great Elm branch, where he had been fitfully, subliminally sleeping in the cold Autumn night. And sixth, that his selected weapon was in fact a turnip he had been half-heartedly nibbling before drifting off to sleep.

Yes, all things considered, flight would have been the better option, had he not at the outset struck such a decidedly lethal blow.

He had not, in fact, been the one to slay this person. Flight began to look highly desirable once again. Myrddin Wyllt hastily gathered his few posessions. One lute, worn. Cloak, not currently worn, but it was bloody cold tonight, so it was about to become so. Burlap sack of holding, except now that he was holding it, the lute and his cloak, he could no longer put on his boots, worn. He sat down, trembling, and fumbled in the dark for his other sock.

A shooting star sailed low, far too low, overhead and to the East, lighting the Enchanted Forest bluely and casting menacing, razor shadows Westward. While this was immensely helpful for finding his sock, he had to admit that it also cast a pallor on his decision to travel the Enchanted Forest. Not that he had had many choices about that when fleeing the village at Cator Court.

Now fully, if hastily, equipped for flight, Myrddin turned and surveyed his surroundings. Angry shouting to the East, and he thought he saw faint flashes of green. Westward, then! But his recently deceased visitor had been travelling South when he tripped over Myrddin, so the threat was probably not all concentrated Eastward.

He turned to run, and stopped short. To loot or not to loot? But, he was a lutist by trade, and for what was a sack if not for sacking? And more grimly, he remembered the hunger pains that had gotten him into so much trouble in Cator Court. Certainly, his poor fingering of the lute had played a part, and the farmer's daughter hadn't helped. Looting practice it would be, then, but quickly.

First, the weapon. A baton? Was he a sheriff? It was metal, but short and thin, and finely carved.

No time for questions, into the bag it goes. And he wore a scarf over his face! A bandit? No time! Water skin. No rations. The boots looked amazing! Tough as ox-hide, almost to the knee. He sorely hated to leave them, but had no time to remove them from their owner. No money at all, and no jewelry. Wait, an odd sash across his shoulder held six pear-sized metal ornaments. A badge of office? A liability, but he took it anyway. He cursed, then ran, and as he ran, he realized - the victim had had no visible wounds.

The cold, damp air burned in Myrddin's heaving lungs as he alternately leapt and tripped over roots and hedges. He flagged, looking for concealment. But then there was movement in a tree perhaps 20 meters to the right, in his peripheral vision. Green lightning leapt from the tree and crashed into the ground just ahead of him. He stifled a shriek and plunged on.

When he could run no more, he flung himself behind a stone and under a gorse bush. To his horror, he realized it was a standing stone. At least he was outside the ring. He squirmed away from the stone, then froze when he saw a flash of purple-black.

A Lady had appeared in the ring - from nowhere! - facing away from him. And... clad in men's trousers. She began to move in a practiced way. Myrddin began to weep silently from terror. Her arms extended, she twisted at the hips, back and forth. She held a baton like the one... no! It was a wand! He shut his eyes in horror, awaiting the curse... and saw the flash anyway through his clenched eyelids.

"How many did you get?" A man's voice.

"Five."

Myrddin opened his eyes to see the new voice. A lord had appeared in the ring, dressed as the lady was, and as Myrddin's visitor had been. He swept the wand in his right hand in front of him, arm extended, across his chest, and held it there with his left, so that the wand pointed at Myrddin, who cringed. But the newcomer only looked toward the lady.

"Lies. There's no way you killed more than three. They got me before I even saw them."

"You will learn."

Were they... stretching? The movements were practiced, but seemed casual. This did little to relieve his terror, but he listened more carefully. Their speech was intelligible but... strange.

Another flash of purple that made his retinas ache, and another. There were four... souls? Two Lords and two Ladies, beautifully built, tall and muscular. They spoke casually of slaughter - and of being slaughtered. Surely they were faeries. Or demons. Or worse? He tried not to guess.

"Again into the breach, Scylla?"

"I am ready. Liroy?"

The one she looked at made no answer, but leapt into the air, shrieking like a beast. He shouted "Confringo!" as he flung his arm toward a perfectly innocent alder sapling, which burst into flames. Then again at a boulder just outside the clearing. Myrddin screamed as the rock exploded, but was drowned in the noise of vaporizing granite.

The others looked at each other and Liroy, sighed, and ran after him out of the clearing and Eastward.


	3. Antenna

3 October 1991

Antenna

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres paused as he passed the pile of electronics in the recesses of the pantry in his parents' home. Under the dust, yellow, green and red LEDs looked back at him darkly. Black cables snaked half-heartedly into corners, or terminated with fanglike, threatening connectors.

"Mum, wasn't this kit supposed to go back to the university?", Harry asked.

Petunia Evans-Verres paused. "You know, I don't recall. We'd have to ask your Father. Which project was this for?"

"Mum! It was just last year", replied Harry, somewhat chagrined.

"So that's what, 8 projects and a year gone by?", said his mother.

"Okay, point taken. This is my Ham Radio gear and the kit we borrowed from Oxford. Remember all the studying and Morse Code?"

Harry had become briefly enamored with the idea of speaking with people across the globe using radio signals, just long enough to absorb a license manual and enough Morse Code to pass the exam. To be fair, he had been equally enamored of the notion that there was little age discrimination in Amateur Radio - anyone who could pass the test could get a license to transmit, regardless of age. And getting the license at younger than 14 years old was in fact a sort of community honor, enough to land a brief mention in the hobbyist magazines. Harry passed the test two weeks before his 10th birthday, and a few weeks later received a government-issued call sign in the mail: M6QLF.

"Vaguely. I seem to recall spending hundreds of quid on equipment that moved almost immediately to its present location," his mother said, only half joking.

Harry bristled. "It's not my fault all they talk about is antennas and the weather. Besides, once you've used FTP servers on the Internet halfway 'round the world, it kind of loses its appeal."

"Ah yes, the Internet. That's much better. Millions of quid to share obscure computer jokes."

"It's not just computer jokes, Mum. Usenet has hundreds of forums where people from Universities all over the world discuss all sorts of things." All sorts of things, in fact, now that he thought of it.

Harry had, in fact, managed to connect to the Internet using the radio and communications gear before him, as part of a short-lived attempt to show how someday, perhaps even before the year 2000, people might browse Usenet from their vehicles at up to 1200 bits per second (half-duplex), with only a cubic meter of gear in the boot. For some reason, people hadn't seemed as impressed as they ought to be with this idea. Granted, he hadn't told them about the more interesting Usenet groups, but somehow he didn't think that would have strengthened his case.

Harry went back to his room and retrieved his walk-in luggage. He had a difficult decision to make. The study area inside the trunk was already packed with books, just as his family's house was. But the idea of having access to a global network of people, even if they were muggles, was tantalizing. He began carrying equipment down the stairs and into the luggage.

Draco wobbled uncertainly on his broom, just outside one of the highest towers of Hogwarts. "What kind of talisman did you say this was?" he shouted into the open window nearby, awkwardly holding the aluminum tube with its many protrusions.

"I told you - it's not a talisman. It's an antenna," called Harry faintly from somewhere inside the attic. Presently he emerged near the window with his wand, several omega-shaped pieces of bent sheet-metal and some wood screws in one hand, and his broom in the other. He briefly tried mounting the broom while crouched in the open window, and nearly tumbled out of it into the fog below. He paused to catch his breath, sighed, and began dropping the items into his mokeskin.

"And those bits are _not_ for making a shamble, then?" Draco leered.

"No, they're just brackets." Harry replied, annoyed. "They're just to mount the antenna to the roof."

Draco nearly pushed Harry off his broom. "Is that all we're doing up here? Muggles *are* stupid." He reached into the recesses of his own robe and pulled out what looked like a wad of used bubble gum. He perfunctorily stuck it to a nearby beam and jammed the side of the pole into the other side of the wad. "This where you wanted it?"

"Well, yes, but I..."

"Tenent continuum." Abruptly, Draco let go of the pole and grasped his broom, sailing away from the wall in a wide arc, and wringing out the hand that had been holding the pole for the last ten minutes.

Harry cringed for a moment, then realized that the pole wasn't going anywhere. "Hm, that does seem to simplify matters."

A full 45 minutes of cable wrangling later, Harry and Draco sat before a keyboard in a nest of wires and boxes, piled precariously on an ancient wooden desk in the attic of the tower.

Harry had remained unsuccessful at convincing Draco that the gear was anything but a primitive tradition worshipping magic, like a cat proudly attempting to contribute to a household by dragging in dead rodents.

"I'm telling you, Draco, this is the latest in muggle technology - the ability to send information around the world in seconds. Well, minutes in our case. Watch!" Harry flipped a switch.

Draco snickered. "I don't sense anything. Perhaps my mind is not sufficiently in tune. Should I pop into the great hall at dinner and smuggle out a dead chicken for a sacrifice?"

Harry's countenance fell. "Ah. Right. The battery's probably dead. The solar panel will have to charge it up. Which will take... several hours." Harry began searching for the charging cables.

"This does not strengthen your argument." Draco was beginning to form a new hypothesis, that Harry's long and idealistic rants about rationality were just a highly intelligent mind's inferiority complex. He would have to think of a way to test this hypothesis. Or not, considering the notion in light of itself. "Look, I'm starving. I'm heading to dinner."

Harry, half buried in a large cardboard box marked "DON'T TOUCH -HJPEV", barely noticed when Draco left.


	4. Emily

3 July 2011

Emily stopped twiddling the zinc-coated hex-cap 2 inch 1/4"-20 bolt between her fingers and started unconsciously counting to 31 with her left hand, as her eyes darted across the screen. Her fingers tapped the time-stained writing desk.

Thumb. Index. Thumb+index. Middle. Middle+thumb, middle+index, middle+index+thumb. 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111.

Repeating with ring finger held down, she repeated the pattern, still without conscious thought, counting 8-15: 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1110, 1111.

Then her pinky came down, touched the portkey, and launched her up the stairs.

Her mother shot bolt upright in bed and shrieked a perfect fifth above Emily's startled yelp. Emily would have found that amusing, except that before the thought had time to form, the heat from the Chai Tea, scalding her forearm and soaking her shirt, preempted it and caused her to swear.

"Aaaaauuuuggghhhhdaaammmmm. . ." she began, but before she finished her oath, and before the cold knives of adrenaline consciously registered in her brain, a thought occurred that compounded the animal panic of falling up the stairs with rational, human, lucid panic. She dove back down the ragged oak stairs, skipping three worn carpet-covered stairs at a time, while her mother, even more bewildered than usual, peered after her.

The dividing wall creaked as she swung around the corner of the kitchen to the writing desk, and her worst fears were confirmed. The tea had soaked not only her backpack, the table and the worn carpet, but had violated the Thinkpad. The brand new X120 that her manager wouldn't let her buy, that she had painstakingly researched for weeks and paid for herself.

She flipped the laptop over and scrabbled at the battery latch, jerking out the power cord as she went. The battery clattered to the floor and cracked like the breaking of limbs. Trembling, Emily set the laptop down teepee-style and allowed herself a face-wall before collapsing into the other, non-tea-laden, hard-backed chair, utterly defeated. The chair creaked as worn old kitchen chairs do, and slid in its joints by at least an inch before finding a tenuous equilibrium.

When the trembling had subsided, and the dull throb of the post-adrenaline headache was starting to set in, she pulled out her phone and dialed a number, anachronistically. "Pradeep, sorry to call your cell. I just spilled tea on my laptop, so I'm going to miss the video conference. . . Yeah. . . Uh-huh. . . Thanks for covering. . . Yeah, the Thinkpad. . . No, warranties suck. I gotta go clean it out. See ya."

She put her head in her hands, but almost immediately sat up again to begin first aid. Find a cloth. Assess the damage. Most of the spill had hit the wrist rests, but the V, B and N keys were wet. Only a little in the vents. Could be a lot worse, but keyboard spills were never good. She viciously wiped the table and set the laptop back on the table harder than she should have, which made her wince. Why, why do we hurt the ones we love?

Her arm was really starting to hurt now, and her mind was returning to single-threaded, ordered thought. A list began to assemble. Change shirt. Fix arm. Head hurts. Wipe up the rest of the spill. Find the Sembl. . . the sonic. . . the tool. Dammit, she hated that thing.

With her mind preoccupied loathing Farnsworth's Sembler while also subconsciously pondering whether she could be said to have No Tea, the cloth in her hand reaching toward the spill on the table, and her shoulder retreating from her soaked and clammy shirt, she segfaulted briefly, stopped, and sighed. One thing at a time. Perfunctorily wipe table. Discard cloth. Find new shirt. Start changing. Wash arm in cold water. Finish installing shirt. Briefly consider aspirin for headache, even more briefly consider magical cures. Decide to tough it out. Fix laptop.

Farnsworth's Sembler. Everything that was wrong with magic. Mom had fancied herself a tinkerer, and Emily had always been fascinated by the Sembler, the one and only tool in the toolbox. At two years old she got ahold of it and thoroughly disassembled most of the appliances in the house. Walnut handle, tacky steampunk brass labels on the two buttons, "DIS" and "ASS". Point and click. With it, she turned a discarded fridge and a bathroom mirror into a sun-tracking heliostat that could ignite cardboard boxes from 10 meters. It had won her the 10th grade muggle science fair and a scholarship to Carnegie-Mellon, and given her hope that she wouldn't always be an outcaste. And at CMU, without the help of the Sembler, and Lamda's Calculator, and the Fully Justified Notepad, she had failed all the classes in her first quarter.

Emily snapped back to the present, and remembered. She opened the outer pocket on her backpack and pulled out the small, dusty multi-tool with Search Tools printed in friendly letters on the side. Someone on her team had decided, quite accurately, that it was better team schwag than a t-shirt, and thus, months ago, at the team off-site, they had each gotten one.

The screwdriver was too big for the tiny black phillips-head screws on the back of the laptop, but the knife blade did the trick. Well, it didn't really: it chewed the paint off the heads and mangled the slots, and probably dulled the knife. But she'd be damned if she'd use the Sembler.

Emily flipped the computer back over and gently pulled the keyboard loose. She moved to the sink and ran water over the infected keys before realizing that she didn't actually remember if that was the right thing to do. Whatever. Already done. Get it outside to dry off.

Then she turned her attention to the battery. This was worse than the keyboard, and she had been avoiding thinking about it. She had a USB keyboard she could use if the built-in unit was beyond repair. But most laptops won't work without a battery. The battery was cracked, internal wires visible. But Emily was pretty sure she could fix it with cyanoacrylate, the finger-sticking, skin-crackling, plastic-melting watery glue that gets everywhere but does not, under any circumstances, break fundamental laws of the universe.

The urge was to surf. She could sit down with her phone and check her email, finish the message she had been reading. But no, typing on the phone was too obnoxious, and untyped replies would just pile up in her head. Fix the computer first. No, go take a walk first, find some glue. Real, non-magical glue.

She walked out of her mom's decrepit 1920's two-story house that would make any Halloween proud, where she had spent all her lonely childhood years. The April sun was slightly warm on the slightly cool breeze of Magical Modesto. Magical Modesto. She cringed inwardly. Magical Modesto. Not exactly cosmopolitan. But beautiful in April, no denying that.

She should never have accepted the portkey. Magic was not a part of her world. It had rejected her, and the billions of people in the real world who couldn't conjure food and water and transport from nothingness.

Stop. Stop piling on. She'd had a bad morning. Morning itself was evil anyway, hung-over, menacing. Even when it didn't break her laptop and stain her shirt. Keep moving. You'll feel better after lunch.

The portkey wasn't her fault, anyway. Somebody had to get Mom up and down the stairs, keep her from wandering away from the house. She had stepped up. The last thing they needed was for Emily to hurt her back, or for both of them to take a tumble. Just think of it as an elevator. Up the stairs, down the stairs. Nothing wrong with that.

Except there was. Walking, now that was honest transportation. It conserved all laws of physics, known and unknown. She hated the stage-hook pull of the portkey, hated not knowing how she got where she was going. And hated that it was forever beyond her grasp to decide where it would go, while Wizards, who didn't have any more inkling, who hadn't worked as hard as she did, who had never had to walk 2 miles to CMU in the rain, could decide that.

Deep breaths. Happy, sunshine, see? Almost to the corner, with the lamppost that connects to Muggle Modesto, and then another 2 blocks to the convenience store.

That damn lamppost. Another stupid violation of all the inviolable rules she had studied at school, real school.

She had almost gotten away from it, almost gotten it all out of her head. She had packed away the magic along with her invisible friend in Magic Kindergarten and the stuffed koala she'd cried on at home after the kids at school called her a Squib and made her backpack invisible only to her, and made her lunch turn into worms inside her mouth.

Stop. Stop piling on. Emily pulled her left hand out of her pocket, paused, then pulled the right one out too. Fingers tapping her legs, she counted to 15 with both hands. Thumbs. Indexes. Thumbs+indexes. 100. 101. 110. 111. 1000. 1001. 1010. 1011. 1100. 1101. 1110. 1111. Then she counted to a thousand.


End file.
